Information Technologies & International Development

Information Technologies & International Development is an interdisciplinary open-access journal that focuses on the intersection of information and communication technologies (ICTs) with the "other four billion" – the share of the world population whose countries are not yet widely connected to the Internet nor widely considered in the design of new information technologies.

ITID Publishes Special Section on Gender, Mobile and Development

As a tribute to International Women's Day 2018, Information Technologies & International Development is proud to present a Special Section on "Gender, Mobile, and Development."

This new Special Section on “Gender, Mobile, and Mobile Internet: Opportunities and Challenges in Mobile-Centric Use” which features five articles from international scholars and guest-edited by Savita Bailur, Silvia Masiero, and Jo Tacchi.

What exactly is “Gender, Mobile and Mobile Internet”?

Women in low- and middle-income countries are, on average, 10% less likely to own a mobile phone than men, which translates into 184 million fewer women owning mobile phones, per the Groupe Spéciale Mobile Association’s (GSMA) latest Mobile Gender Gap Report (2018). The report also states that some 1.2 billion women in low- and middle-income countries do not have access to mobile Internet. These are thought-provoking figures in an increasingly digital age, but what happens when we go beyond access as a metric when it comes to women, mobiles and mobile Internet? SDG 5 (one of the 17 “sustainable development goals”) aims to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” by 2030, and specifically, to enhance the use of enabling technology to promote the empowerment of women. This Special Section asks what “empowerment” through technology, especially mobiles, means for women and how it is achieved.